Electronic Abacus 129
yoey writes: "Blast from the past in an article at the Economist: There are those who do not believe in the desirability of introducing anything as esoteric as electronics into business routine at all. Others believe that there is a limited field for electronic methods, provided that they fit into, and do not disrupt, established business systems. But there is a third group ... who consider that a major revolution in office methods may be possible. This revolution would involve scrapping the greater part of the established punch card calculating routine and substituting a single 'electronic office' where the giant computor [sic] would perform internally all the calculations needed for a whole series of book-keeping operations, printing the final answer in and on whatever form was required."
LEO (Score:3, Informative)
Re:LEO (Score:4, Informative)
About LEO [lse.ac.uk]
LEO Computers Society [leo-computers.org.uk]
Hope that helps. A search on "lyons bakery" should throw up more information in any decent search engine.
Re:LEO (Score:1)
Re:LEO (Score:1)
http://www.man.ac.uk/Science_Engineering/CHSTM/
This article is all fine and dandy but... (Score:5, Funny)
Breast Pocket? (Score:2)
Re:Breast Pocket? (Score:2, Funny)
/janne
Re:Breast Pocket? (Score:1)
So there.
Re:Breast Pocket? (Score:1)
Re:Breast Pocket? (Score:2)
God, can't believe I just posted that....
But the average office won't have room (Score:1)
downtime (Score:1)
well, they got that bit right
but why spell it 'computor' ?
Re:downtime (Score:1)
spelling explaination... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:downtime (Score:1)
Re:downtime (Score:1)
As they still are today!
Re:downtime (Score:1)
Re:downtime (Score:2)
doesn't really matter.. (Score:2, Insightful)
one less set of eyes to notice the mistake, 45 mote minutes on the phone for me.
First "[sic]"? (Score:4, Funny)
where the giant computor [sic]
Has [sic] ever appeared before in a Slashdot article? That amazed me. Granted, it was put there by the submitter, not an editor, but still that's pretty amazing.
Re:First "[sic]"? (Score:2, Informative)
Because it must be said... (Score:1)
Re:First "[sic]"? (Score:5, Informative)
So even if the original author used "computor" to indiciate some different meaning or usage, but a large part of slashdot would assume it was a typo (which we evidently would), [sic] is appropriate.
Man, this is an unusually anal post for me. It's too cold.
-Puk
p.s. For what it's worth, webster doesn't have "computor".
Re:First "[sic]"? (Score:2)
Re:First "[sic]"? (Score:1)
A cute, little computer boy would be "computadorito".
Hey, "Doritos" means "little gold ones."
Electronic Abyss (Score:2, Interesting)
We may smile complacently at how inscrutable the future was a few decades ago, but we ourselves are incapable of seeing beyond the Technological Singularity [caltech.edu] that will make our A.D. 2001 era seem even quainter than the time period of the referenced article.
Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis.
Re:Electronic Abyss (Score:1)
Note, however, that the article was remarkably perceptive about the potential for business efficiency improvements, although it sounds as if there were sufficient existing examples to make such predictions straightforward.
The Economist [economist.com] contains some of the finest reporting and analysis anywhere. I've wanted to subscribe to it for years; with luck, I'll bite the bullet soon.
Re:Electronic Abyss (Score:1)
[B]People abandon it.[B]
Re:Electronic Abyss (Score:1)
Incidentally, while Vinge mentions a few 20th century minds who have envisioned the singularity which he describes, his super-intelligent being is not unlike Neitzsche's idea of the Uber-mensch or Superman.
Re:Electronic Abyss (Score:1)
Here are a few things to think about.
We have never designed machines that reproduce themselves, and as far as I can see, we are not even moving in that direction. Thirty years to self-reproducing machines that can either survive without humans or at least compel humans to support them? I don't buy it.
For the most part we don't even have machines that can take care of themselves for periods of months! Cars can't drive themselves, and even if they could, they certainly can't change their own oil or anything of that sort. Factories can't send out machines to forage for raw materials, electronics don't have the foggiest notion of reproduction.
The closest things we have to autonomous machines are probably space probes, and they certainly cannot self-repair or reproduce.
What about a super-human intelligence? Think about this: we can't even come close to simulating a human being. We don't even know what it would take to simulate a human being. We barely understand how human beings work. And much of what we do isn't really conscious thinking. For example, a great deal of processing power goes into playing sports. We can't even design autonomous robots to play a decent soccer game.
Sure computers can play good chess, but can they also walk up a flight of stairs? Do they have the sense to run from a burning building? Could they do anything to stop me from unplugging them?
When it comes to making thinking machines, our current capabilities are not even as advanced as a dog. (Chess-playing computers aren't thinking machines, because they are really just ordinary computers running a program) If the "thinking being" also had to be mechanically resillient and reproduce and have useful self-preservation instincts, I doubt we could do as well as a nematode.
To design is human, but to design a human is another matter altogether. While I believe the singularity could happen some day, I don't buy 30 years. No way.
MM
--
I don't really think so.... (Score:2, Insightful)
What OS could it possibly run? Anything by Microsoft is out for obvious reasons, and even UNIX based systems aren't up and fully running 100% of the time...
"Had a terrible day at the office, hunny, the computer went down and we all had to *think*!"
- Phil
Uhh... This is a blast from the past article... (Score:1)
In other words, RTFABP... (You can figure that one out)
HAL (Score:5, Funny)
I have to go to the bathroom.
You've already been twice this morning, Dave. Perhaps you should cut down on the coffee.
Hal, let me in. I really have to go!
I'm sorry, Dave, but I can't let you do that. Please go back to your desk.
etc.
Re:HAL (Score:1)
Re:HAL (Score:1)
Computor (Score:1)
-Evan
Re:Computor (Score:1)
A pen is a specialised machine to do a single task.
A ruler is a specialised machine to do a single task.
Even a calculator a specialised machine to do a single task.
My folks can operate those, anybody can - even the new trainee office assistant fresh out of school. Embedded, even "simple* embedded systems are going to be more complex than these time- honoured tools.
Sometimes you just have to take a step back and realise not everyone is as technically au fiat as the Slashdot populous.
- Phil
Electronic calculations in the office? (Score:2)
Re:Electronic calculations in the office? (Score:1)
"Come now, Smithers, this isn't rocket science, it's brain surgery!"
Good for operators. (Score:3, Insightful)
This is excellent for those highly trained people needed to keep those things running. Even if someone invented a valve that was 100% reliable, tax laws change often enough that many operators will be needed to keep this computer up to date.
Re:Good for operators. (Score:2)
Almost makes me want to be a luddite
D
Technology barriers (Score:2)
There were several big problems for all such devices before the invention of Solid state components. onw of these was reliability. Tubes (valves) burning out, etc. And the other was the hand manufacter nature of these devices. The end result was that the was an effective limit to the size that you could build these things before it was down for repair and maintenance most of the time. This was ultimately true, even for transistor devices.
Solid state devices, being able to combine all of these thing onto a chip solved the problem.
Re:Technology barriers (Score:2)
Development of the IC (Score:4, Informative)
This is all documented in the book "the Chip" by T. R. Reid, which I literally have on my desk as I write this. It is briefly summarized here [dotpoint.com]:
In other words, it wasn't just solid state as in a single transistor, but solid state, as in entire cirsuits, the integrated IC that was the solution.The problem was that transistors still had to be interconnected to form electronic circuits, and hand-soldering thousands of components to thousands of bits of wire was expensive and time-consuming. It was also unreliable; every soldered joint was a potential source of trouble. The challenge was to find cost-effective, reliable ways of producing these components and interconnecting them.
The Tyranny of Numbers was quite real, and occupied minds for most of the 50s. The solution of this basic and fundamental problem made possible the computer age. They are probably as important as the binary logic that runs on them.
You can also read more about this [ti.com] on the Texas Instrument Website.
Re:Development of the IC (Score:1)
Re:Development of the IC (Score:2)
Remember, especially if you look at the TI site, they are describing the engineering problem they had. You can argue if this is sensible or a fraud of whatever, but these engineers were describing the problem they actually had.
Your reluctance to accept it is not their problem.
here is a google search link to help you out
http://www.google.com/search?q=Kilby+tyranny+numbe rs+engineering [google.com]
Simply put, your objections are not all that relevant because they are contradicted by facts. It is nothing personal. It is just some sort of a blind spot that needs to be sorted out. The facts of the matter are as real as the millions of 1950's dollars that were spent searching for a solution.
Re:Development of the IC (Score:1)
2 years/tube / 20,000 tubes = less than an hour between repairs. 1 year/tube = less than a half hour between repair on average. This is an example of the tyrrany of numbers, especially w.r.t. the proliferation of ever more vacuum tubes in "new" models of computers.
What were you thinking I was saying? Your reluctance to be on the same planet as me is not my problem.
Re:Development of the IC (Score:2)
Which is why I pointed you to the source materials, etc. I was getting frustrated.
;-)
That said, of course the basics of this issue were not tubes so much, but the exponential increase in hand soldered connections, increasing wire length with attendent signal lag and interference problems, and exponential complexity of design in the smallest box possible. These issues continued to exist even with the discrete standalone transistors.
So tubes were not a core part of the issue at hand, even though they were still widely used. Looking over the previous posts, you seemed to miss things like this paragraph:
The problem was that transistors still had to be interconnected to form electronic circuits, and hand-soldering thousands of components to thousands of bits of wire was expensive and time-consuming. It was also unreliable; every soldered joint was a potential source of trouble. The challenge was to find cost-effective, reliable ways of producing these components and interconnecting them.
which got ungodly when dealing with thousands and thousands of components. (vs the many dozens in a radio or Stereo)
So Basically, I said RTFM (ie, Article)
Re:Development of the IC (Score:2)
Re:Technology barriers (Score:1)
There were several big problems for all such devices before the invention of Solid state components. onw of these was reliability. Tubes (valves) burning out, etc.
Running the tube heaters (filaments) at low power increased their reliability enormously, but this type of computing still required external checks for errors.
Re:Technology barriers (Score:2)
My how times change...
I'd like to see any
Electronic Abacus? (Score:1)
Having an electronic abacus sounds as about as useful as an "electronic sliderule". Anyone else see the irony there?
The Answer (Score:1)
Forty-two.
Who could have predicted this nightmare (Score:3, Interesting)
What noone figured was the effect of personal computers on business. People still believe they increase productivity and decrease costs. This is the biggest lie out there. The use of the PC in the business has reached and passed the point of dimishing returns and really manay people could better serve companies by shoving the PC aside and getting out a good old pad of paper. We have so lost touch with reality. How many of you do nothing when you can't login or access the network?
Man was doing business for thouysands of years before computers and in reality much of business is still done without them. We (us folks with PC in our face) have experience in business without computing...shame on us.
Re:Who could have predicted this nightmare (Score:1)
And thus is Vinge refuted. Seriously.
Who could have predicted THIS nightmare (Score:2, Insightful)
If anything we are LACKING sufficient computing to
allow for efficient operation of our businesses.
I recently went to refinance my car ( at a bank that will remain nameless ). This bank held my original car loan. I spent an hour filling out
paperwork ( all of which had been filled out with
my original loan ), having the loan officer call my
insurance company to get my insurance information
( even though they had all of my insurance info on
file ), etc. All of this totally redundant. I had to come back the NEXT day because the guy
the loan officer calls to do credit checks and fax
them to him was busy.
All of this should have been accomplishable over the
web. There is NO reason that it had to be that
hard.
Oh yes, and then they proceeded to automagically
debit my old loan payment ( several days after
the old loan had been paid off in full by the new
loan ) because it takes about a week for the PAPER
to work it's way through channels.
It took almost six weeks for the bank to
restore order to my account ( I will not recount the full ins and outs of that, but it was bad ).
All of this was unecessary. If they had proper computer systems handling the back end of the bank I should have been able to go to the web page for my account arrange refinancing there in under 10 minutes.
Note that every one of the bank employees I dealt
with had a computer on their desk. What made this
experience so inefficient ( and frustrating ) was
not their lack of computers, but the lack of competent back end systems for them to access with those computers. That is were the efficiency comes.
Re:Who could have predicted THIS nightmare (Score:1)
Re:Who could have predicted THIS nightmare (Score:1)
As far as checks go, they do indeed immediately deposit your check in their own internal accounts (with other central banks) and don't wait for it to clear. Of course, some checks bounce, and they have to pay the penalty to the central bank, but the interest they get from depositing everyone's checks (but not crediting your account) for those couple of days outweighs the loss by a factor of a thousand.
Re:Who could have predicted THIS nightmare (Score:1)
Banks have to have some "official" person to check the tiller's daily transactions and as usual deposits made after 2 p.m. are posted on the NEXT business day. Because that "official" is gone golfing after 2 p.m. After all they don't call them banker's hours for nothing....
Re:Who could have predicted this nightmare (Score:2, Insightful)
People also sucked the marrow from bones and ate raw meat for thousands and thousands of years before fire was put to use in food preperation. There're still places where people do it. Does that mean we should all rush out and chase a buffalo off a cliff?
Re:Who could have predicted this nightmare (Score:1)
Sushi bars?
Re:Who could have predicted this nightmare (Score:1)
Re:Who could have predicted this nightmare (Score:1)
You are forgetting the orders of magnitude change in scale of the amount of business being done. Shut down all PC's and sit around for three days a week and you will still get twice as much work done in two days as you did 50 years ago w/o computers.
Not really... (Score:2)
The second of the problem is computers being untrusted and used as a parallel system. There is no such thing as a paperless office. Paper records are kept parallel to computer records, sometimes requiring all of the old work, and all of the computer work. This is more often an apparent problem than a real one, as it moves a smaller amount of administrative work to an earlier time. While it's less efficient than it could be, it's better than not using computers.
The third part, aside from being a problem in itself, is half a cause and half an effect of the second; they grew up intertwined. As home computer systems were adapted to office use, and the first generation of programmers raised with computers from a young age appeared, reliability was sacrificed in favor of attractiveness, apparent ease of learning, and flashy feature checklists. Software is replaced every few years, and old data is lost or damaged. Many users stopped considering computers infallable and started considering them unreliable, dramatically limiting their use.
This last one is indisputably a real, serious problem in software design. Software is rushed to market, then thrown away just as the bugs are worked out. But this is more directly a problem of poor software purchasing; the market demands features, useful or not, and the software industry can only comply to that demand, or be unprofitable and unappreciated.
Old joke (Score:3, Funny)
Looking forward (Score:2, Insightful)
What can't we imagine now? (Score:1)
How about a MS press release that states that they have had a change of heart, and now will be concentrating on producing quality Open Source software, because they've finally run out of room to put the money?
Any one of these would do quite nicely. Although personally, I'm still holding out for a little liberty, justice, and free beer for all...
What can't I imagine (Score:2, Interesting)
Voice recogniton software (that works)
Good search engines
high speed internet access at home (no really)
flying cars (its 2001 where the heck is my flying car?)
cheap household robots
wet wired computer hardware
traveling by car faster than by bicycle (traffic issues)
and many many more wonderful items that Iam too wacked out on caffine to think of
Come on Guys!!! (Score:1)
Somebody throws you an open line like this and all your can to is ask for is bug fixes, new versions of existing stuff, and BillG's head on a platter?
What happened to your imagination?
Aristoi Walter Jon Williams.
The Diamond Age Neal Stephenson.
Dreaming Metal Melissa Scott.
And fer fuck sake! Neuromancer!!!! (William Gibson, of course)
Can't we just wish a little?
How 'bout a completely new programming language? Not just different syntax, but completely redesigned from the basic theories on communication on up.
How 'bout the next generation OS built on this new language? Not Linux, not WinXP, not Java, not "some new flavor of" but the next step in OS evolution? Think cyberpunk, guys. (And, no, not the RPG, but the real stuff, Gibson, Sterling, Williams, Scott, Delany, etc). Only MS could make a 3D interface boring. A Hallway? Give me a break.
How 'bout computer circuitry embedded into clothing? Hell, how 'bout computer circuitry embedded in your head?
How 'bout Salma Hayek?
How 'bout pulling your thinking cap out of the closet, dusting it off and running wild with it?
Moekandu
"The object is not to bring your enemy to his knees, but his senses." - Ghandi.
"That man has a mind like a steel trap. It tends to slam shut at the slightest quiver, and things tend to come out mangled." - Me.
Of course, if your enemy has no senses, a proper use of WhoopAss will do the trick!
the classic in this vein (Score:3, Interesting)
Tabulating Machines (Score:2)
I've always wondered what tasks were performed by these predecessors to the modern computer. I assume that the catalog sales store was using them to keep track of inventory and/or sales.
Sometimes you can see these machines in 1960s spy or science fiction movies. Look for scenes where "the answer" to a question is delivered on a Hollerith card.
Re:Tabulating Machines (Score:2)
Holy 1960's, Batman! Who needs spy or sci-fi movies when the BAT-COMPUTER(tm) did that?
3rd Option already exists (Score:1, Interesting)
e.g. MSExcel is the glue which holds together the banking sector's myriad specialist systems
established punch card routine (Score:5, Informative)
Keypunches: a keyboard that punched holes into cards. Good ones also typed the data along the top of the card so it was human-readable, and could copy part or all of a card. The ones I worked with could be programmed by typing control codes onto a card and wrapping it around a spool inside the machine -- this gave you tab stops and let you set it to automatically copy headers from each card to the next one, until you hit an escape key to let you change the headers...
Sorters & mergers: Sorting and grouping was accomplished by machines that would physically shuffle the cards into order. The operation was counter-intuitive; to alphabetize a 20 letter name field, you'd start by sorting into 26 bins on the _last_ (rightmost) letter, stack them up and sort on the next letter (which left cards differing only in the last letter in order), and repeat for 20 times through. Searches were done by setting the sorter to set aside cards matching the criteria and running the whole set through. And after doing a search or other operation that split the deck into two categories, it was nice to have a machine to merge the two decks back together into order without requiring a full-scale sort.
Tabulators: Would read the sorted, grouped, cards and add up the columns. Also could perform calculations on a card (like hoursworked * payrate = grosspay) and punch the answer into the card, or onto a new card. Tabulators generally did not type human-readable text on the cards, so...
Printers: One kind would read cards and type text along the top. Some of these were still in use in the 1980's, because mainframes still could output to card punches, and those punches did not type text... The other kind read cards and printed the report on paper.
When I started hanging out at the college computer center (1971), the databases were kept on removable hard disk packs, and punch cards were mainly for data input. However, even though they'd keep 3 copies of each database on different disks, the reliability was low enough that for really important stuff they'd also store the punch cards as a backup, or sometimes have the computer punch a backup into cards. The machine that printed on those cards was kept running, just in case. At least a half-dozen keypunches were in continuous use (and the card reader on the computer had to be overhauled once a week so it could continue reading all those cards). The tabulator was just gathering dust, but the sorter was used frequently -- batch database updates run faster if the input is in the same order as the disk file.
Re:established punch card routine (Score:2)
"Oh this guy is good!, see here? where he introduced the virus? see how round and aligned those holes are? this guy is a first class hacker man!"
Thank god they didn't write Swordfish back then...
Re:established punch card routine (Score:2, Funny)
How Soon They Forget! (Score:3, Informative)
The operation was counter-intuitive; to alphabetize a 20 letter name field, you'd start by sorting into 26 bins on the _last_ (rightmost) letter, stack them up and sort on the next letter (which left cards differing only in the last letter in order), and repeat for 20 times through.
This is the radix sort, which all hackers should learn while teething. When you apply certain rules that ensure that only columns that might be significant are compared, it is an extremely efficient sorting algorithm.
Worst-case, the complexity is O(l n), where l is the length of the longest string and n is the number of strings. With completely random data, l is effectively log n, so overall it goes to O(n log n). The extra rules substantially reduce the effect of lack of randomness in strings, so it's likely that the algorithm will almost always run in O(n log n)
Compare to a merge sort, which is O(n log n) worst-case, the best you can get, but that assumes that the comparison step is constant. With a string, worst-case comparison is O(l), resulting in overall performance of O(l n log n) or, with random data, O(n log^2 n). QuickSort is even worse, with a worst-case performance of O(n^2 log n), though still an average performance like the merge sort. (Too bad I can't use superscript on this board.)
Uh huh... (Score:1)
Sure, but I still remember having, as a sysop back in the '70s, dropping stacks of punch cards (on a number of occasions) and having to get them back into sequence by eyeball.
Have we come that far?
LSD (Score:2)
Note. This was written before Decimalisation came along in 1971. before then, instead of the current system of 100 pence to the pound, we had Pounds Shillings and Pence commonly known as LSD (from the latin, Libra, Solidi, Denarii).
There were 12 pence to every shilling, and 20 shillings to the pound.
Re:LSD (Score:1)
Re:LSD (Score:2, Interesting)
I wonder what the Suns headline would be? "decirubbish" followed up by "We don't need no fangled eurocratic decimalisation here!"
Strange to think, One and two shilling were still legal tendar about 10/12 years ago - as 10 and 5 pence pieces.
They have a point (Score:3, Insightful)
I recently interviewed at a company that had 400 employees. They had an terribly complicated year end bonus structure. They spent millions of dollars and many man years automating the bonus calculation process. For 400 people. Think about that for a minute. You could hire temps to do the calculations for the next 50 years for what it cost to automate the process. To top it off the rules change every year, forcing a recode of the calculation engine.
But the root cause is needless complexity. Whether you do it with computers or will people complexity adds cost, with usually very little benefit. I have seen executive bonus systems that jump through torturous calculations that end up in a net difference of $50 compared to a simple flat percentage scheme. People just don't think about why they are making rules, and what the cost of those rules will be to the business.
But anyway, my point was, past a certain level of complexity you are better off doing it with people, instead of building fragile and intracate rule based automated systems in an attempt to handle every eventuality.
-josh
Technology enslaves man? (Score:3, Interesting)
My Dad worked on one of those! (Score:4, Informative)
For a wealth of information on the computer mentioned in the article, the LEO, see:
www.leo-computers.org.uk [leo-computers.org.uk] [i.hate.square.brackets] [probably.already.slashdotted.to.hell]
What you have to realise is at the time, my Dad and other people working on the LEOs genuinely believed that these were the world's first computers ever, not just the world's first business computers as they later became known.
You see, at the time, all the World War Two computer developments were covered under the millitary Official Secrets Act.
When these secrets broke to the general public in the 1970s, needless to say my Dad was somewhat dissapointed to discover he was not a great computing pioneer after all!
My Dad fondly recalls being able to boil a kettle and fry bacon & eggs on these monsters.
And my dad was on the other side of the tracks (Score:1)
Re:My Dad worked on one of those! (Score:2)
Your Dad mustn't have hung around the University of Manchester, then; they had a stored program computer running in 1948 [computer50.org], but the leo-computers.org.uk site [leo-computers.org.uk] says that, although the directors of Lyons "decided to take an active role in promoting the commercial development of computers" in October 1947, the LEO wasn't operational until 1951. Were the Manchester SSEM or Mark I military secrets?
Forward thinking (Score:3, Insightful)
Some achievement for a bakery and chain of tea shops!
Re:Forward thinking (Score:1)
And then remakably daft thinking for selling it off, imagine, we could all be running LyonsOS sugar coated edition, or NiceStep.
ObJoke (Score:1, Offtopic)
If only my WinMe box had that kind of uptime!
Desk Set (Score:2, Interesting)
It'll never work! (Score:1)
Absolutely wrong (Score:1)
Doing a quick search on Microsoft's web site for "giant computor" yielded no result.
Hence, in the light of the axiom: "Nothing exists 'till Microsoft invents it" I'm forced to draw the conclusion that there is no such thing as giant computor.
Damn y'all geeks for a second you almost fooled me in believing all those blinking computer lights I've seen in the movies are for real.
I would love to not have to support 5 diff apps! (Score:1)